2146/Oh Brave New World

Oh Brave New World
Date of Scene:	24 August 2017
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Summary needed
Cast of Characters:	Brainiac 5, Invisible Kid

---

Brainiac 5 has posed:
There were things to explore on the island. Ancient ruins. Puzzles. Mind-games. And books. They were not all copies of Brainy's memoir.

But eventually, things blur together into a hazy golden dream, don't they? There's the waves and the puzzles and touchstones of memory -- but there's nobody to *talk* to, is there--

But then, one day, the dream dissolves into light--and awakening is to the hiss-gurgle of steaming fluid draining away.

Invisible Kid has posed:
    Lyle coughs a couple times, and blinks at the light. Opens one eye experimentally. Closes it again. Not a good experiment.
    It slowly settles in that his beach is gone. Opens the other eye. Looks like the medical bay on the cruiser. Looks around. Sees a green blur topped by yellow. Coughs again. "I rewrote your autobiography," he says hoarsely, and coughs again. "So I guess it's a biography now." He sounds a little clearer. Not much.
    "I retitled it too. 'My Life Assisting the Greatest Inventor of the 31st Century'." The other eye finally opens.

Brainiac 5 has posed:
Brainy is working at a console. "Vital signs are stabilized. Final metabolization of the solution, one hundred percent. In the end, the key to it was simple... it practically jumped up and bit me."

He puts his hands behind his back, as things come into focus. The tube opens. Lyle is still wearing the mask and goggles--easy enough to pull those off. "Fortunately that wasn't the master copy." He is looking at a vital sign readout, now, with his hands behind his back.

Invisible Kid has posed:
    "Still feel like death lightly warmed over," Lyle groans, settling back a little and showing no inclination to sit up yet. "You sure I'm done cooking?"
    He raises one hand, or tries to anyway. Things aren't quite obeying his commands yet. "And it is the master copy now. Unless you have an offline version. In which case, well played."

Brainiac 5 has posed:
"Of course I do." There is a cup of broth and a cup of tea, steaming on a tray. Brainy hasn't lookd at Lyle yet. "Yes. And don't worry, there was a rinse cycle, so the thermogenic solution has been washed off. You're fine." Brainy says, "Aside from another week of mandatory medical leave so you can recover. I can put you back in the VR rig, if you prefer."

Invisible Kid has posed:
    Lyle props himself up a little. Not much. "Figured you would. I can always publish it as an unauthorized biography." He takes a couple deep breaths. "No, I need to be awake. I need to recover. Not sleep it off."
    He sits up a little further. Still not much. "This is where you turn around and glare at me and tell me never to do anything that stupid ever again, isn't it? Because I know not to. I -- Oh, *grife*!" He really tries to sit up now, but without any decent success. "Shadow! How long have I been out? Has she been fed?"

Brainiac 5 has posed:
"She's fine." Brainy says. He checks another monitor. "Why would I bother to tell you that?" He says, "You plainly obviously know it. The last thing you need is me antagonizing you. I did my job as acting chief physician and got you through this. There's no reason to rub it in or pitch a fit. You've been under for a week. Less time than I projected." His voice is flat, clinical.

Invisible Kid has posed:
    Lyle eyes Brainy's back quizzically. "You okay?" Odd question coming from the guy still working on crawling out of a recovery tank. "I didn't mean to give you a scare like that. I didn't mean to give *me* a scare like that."

Brainiac 5 has posed:
Brainy puts his hands behind his back. "Why wouldn't I be?" He says. He finally looks over his shoulder, now. "I had time to think." He says, "And I realized that I was putting myself through undue emotional stress about the whole thing. My feelings risked our ability to collaborate as Legionnaires. Better to just forget about them." He looks ahead, again.

Invisible Kid has posed:
    "That's a lot easier to say than it is to do." The scent of the broth finally reaches Lyle's nose, and he sits up a little further. "I think I'd rather you *did* pitch a fit. If you bottle up your emotions -- you don't have an off switch -- they're just going to blow up worse later." He reaches for the broth, drags the cup closer, but doesn't yet pick it up. "You know I'm right."

Brainiac 5 has posed:
Brainy tilts his head, and then says, "I kissed you, before I put you in the tank. Again. I instantly regretted it -- and I didn't. It is a complication that neither of us can really afford. Drink the broth, you need the nutrients." It's got an appealing scent of ginger and herbs. Mushrooms. "I'm tired of yelling, at least for the time being, Invisible Kid."

Invisible Kid has posed:
    Lyle picks it up and sips at it slowly. "And if you're not yelling at me," he says with a devilish little grin, "how will I know you care?" He sets the cup back down just in time to have another coughing fit, and sinks back into the tank a little. "Ugh. And how long am I going to be weak?"

Brainiac 5 has posed:
"You spent a week in a tube, not moving. I did what I could but that's debilitating." Brainy looks up, and then he takes the cup of tea and holds it up to Lyle's mouth. Oolong. With lemon. "So you need a week of *actual* rest and light exercise, and you should be back up to speed. There was no permanent systemic damage from the serum, in the end. The thermogenic therapy did the trick of keeping you stable while I nudged you to more efficiently metabolize that serum."

Invisible Kid has posed:
    Lyle sips at the tea, which also helps. "I don't feel cold anymore, that's a good sign. There's one important thing left to check, of course." He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, and wills himself invisible. "Please tell me you can't see me. I'm afraid to look."

Brainiac 5 has posed:
Brainy tilts his head, and raises an eyebrow. And then he says, with a sigh, "Your powers work fine." He grabs where Lyle's arm was, and holds his invisible hand up in front of his face. "Everything is fine. I promised I'd take care of you, and I would. I did." He lets Lyle's wrist go, and his expression tightens into a frown. "One week of rest. I'm sure you can come up with SOMETHING to do."

Invisible Kid has posed:
    Lyle exhales, fading back into opacity. "I just needed to be sure. I did calculate an extremely miniscule chance that I might have damaged that ability. I considered it insignificant before I discovered the error in estimating the decay rate of the miniaturization serum. After that... well, I wasn't sure how far to trust my calculations.

Brainiac 5 has posed:
Brainy says, "Well there's always the chance of delayed side effects. The adjustment to your biochemistry might gradually degrade, forcing you to reformulate your invisiblity serum... or it could cost you your powers completely." His voice is arch. He's needling. "Who can say? That's what happens when you're reckless."

Invisible Kid has posed:
    "Yeah, well, I definitely know not to do it again," Lyle says. "My body considers invisibility to be my natural state -- it should, I designed the serum that way, that the alteration to my biology would be treated as the way I'm supposed to be. I didn't have time to suppress biophysical error checking on this most recent one. And when I altered myself the first time, I tried to make myself a little resistant to further changes after that, just to make sure the invisibility took hold and didn't get biologically edited out."
    He laughs softly. "If we get time travel sorted out, I suppose it would be a bad idea to go talk to me when I was twelve and advise me to dis-improve the serum a little."
    He sits back up a little and grips Brainy's hand weakly. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. I didn't mean to scare me either, but that's beside the point. But I *really* didn't mean to scare you like that."

Brainiac 5 has posed:
Brainy looks down at Lyle's hand gripping his -- and then he looks up and meets Lyle's gaze. His brow draws down, his eyes as hard-cut as emeralds.

And then he's kissing Lyle, for the third time. It's aggressive. It's damn near hungry. There is a slight tremble to Brainy's hand, before he pulls away, and then takes a deep breath, before he turns his head slightly away. "...Grife."

"Of course I forgive you, Invisible Kid." He growls, at himself, and then blows out a breath. "It was so much EASIER before..."

Invisible Kid has posed:
    A couple deep breaths, that's what Lyle needs to regain his equilibrium. It almost works, but not quite: his voice is shaky, beyond his just-out-of-the-tank weakness. "Wow. Uhm. I need to wake up from more comas if it earns me a kiss like that."

Brainiac 5 has posed:
Brainy's cheeks deepen to a dark, dark green as he pointedly doesn't look at the shirtless spy extraordinaire in the tube in front of him. "Magno has taken Earth duty. We agreed, what we had between us was--eye-opening for us both." He scratches the back of his neck. "But that we both needed time to learn more about what we really wanted out of life." He looks up, and says, "And I have decided to re-dedicate myself to my work. If I can just eliminate the distractions that abound around me--"

Invisible Kid has posed:
    "Uh-huh," Lyle says dryly. "I'm willing to bet that if you had one week of genuinely distraction-free time, you'd lose it by the second day. You need those distractions to keep every neuron you have active at all times. You don't *do* peace and quiet."
    He finally sits all the way up and looks around. "And where are my pants? I want to get out of this coffin, even if it's just to get into bed."

Brainiac 5 has posed:
There is a brief, incredulous pause from Brainy. Then he snorts, and looks down again. "You may have a point." He gestures, to a pair of ship-knits, folded and waiting. "So I suppose that's that, then. Shadow is, last I checked, in your quarters, asleep on your pillow."

Invisible Kid has posed:
    "That's a very good place for her," Lyle says, hauling himself up and out with more of an effort than he'll be willing to admit to. He drops heavily onto the edge of the nearest bed and takes a moment to catch his breath before reaching for his clothes and tugging them on with, it's fair to say, rather less grace than he might usually. "Although I half expected you to say she was asleep on the pillow in *your* room where you'd moved her to keep an eye on her until I recovered." He glances up; his expression is unreadable as to whether he's having fun or is serious.

Brainiac 5 has posed:
"She was happier in your quarters." Brainy says, finally, "I think it was because she likes your scent. She kept sneaking out and demanding to be let into your door." He shrugs his shoulders, once. "I've been in the lab for the last week, it wouldn't have mattered whose quarters she was in, would it?" He's looking away, now, that green flush still on his cheeks.

Invisible Kid has posed:
    Properly clad, at least from the waist down, Lyle hauls himself heavily the rest of the way into the bed. "I don't know why," he says with the kind of smug look that makes it perfectly clear he's been paying attention to how Querl does it, "you persist in believing no one knows what a softie you are at heart."

Brainiac 5 has posed:
Querl puts his hands on his hips. "I work very hard to hide it. If they all took it for granted, I'd never get a moment's peace." He turns away from Lyle, and says, "Anyway. A week of rest, and don't pick this moment to be a handsome--" He pauses, and his shoulders visibly stiffen. "A *handful*."

Invisible Kid has posed:
    "You don't get a moment's peace anyway, so it wouldn't make any difference." That last word is interrupted by a huge yawn; Lyle frowns, then shrugs. "Okay. I'll rest. I don't think I have any choice in the matter. Obviously getting out of the tank was all the effort I can make today." He sounds like he's starting to drift off already. Before sinking entirely into sleep, he does manage to say, "Thank you. For everything. My dear friend."

Brainiac 5 has posed:
...Brainy stands, in silence--and then he moves to help Lyle to his room. He lends him a shoulder, instead of just using his force-field to carry him. "...It's the least I can do," He says, somehow not able to look at Lyle the entire walk. "After all, you're only human."

Invisible Kid has posed:
    With an effort of will, Lyle rouses enough to make the walk with Brainy. He could not have made it on his own.
    "And you wouldn't have me any other way," he says softly, perhaps leaning more into Brainy than is actually technically necessary to make the walk.